


shake the bones

by parrishes



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Emotional Baggage, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Sex, Insomnia, Past Relationship(s), Resurrection, Return, Roommates, Running, Speculation, To Be Continued, Unresolved Emotional Tension, guess who's ignoring all these dumbass movies? hint: it's me, kallen and c.c. are both bisexual okay i don't make the rules
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2019-09-28 04:26:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17175857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parrishes/pseuds/parrishes
Summary: Lazarus walks. Kallen processes.





	1. Chapter 1

_“Kallen.”_

It’s a voice she hasn’t heard in years. A dead voice, a growing voice--slow and steady but gaining strength, like a hand pushing up through a grave that’s almost reached the surface. She wonders, if it is indeed him, if he painstakingly dug his way out, if there are splinters underneath his fingernails, if those fine-boned hands of his are bloody and raw. She wonders, as she so frequently has since it happened, if he lied. 

She has to remember that this could all still be a lie. She’s not stupid enough to take this voice at its word. “Who are you?” 

_“Kallen. It’s me.”_

“That man is dead. Whoever you are, I will find you, and I will make you sorry that you called me.” 

_“If I were a stranger, wouldn’t you wonder how I know your number? You should get a new one, by the way. God only knows who else knows it.”_

“No,” she says. “Not good enough. Try again. Tell me something only he would know.” 

_“... I saw you naked in the shower at the Ashford clubhouse.”_

She blinks. 

  

* * *

 

Some hours later, she’s pulling up to an abandoned building--maybe an old hunting cabin--on the western edge of the Izu Peninsula. She can smell the mingling odor of pine and saltwater in the air, and suddenly she’s sick for this place, sick for her childhood, sick for  _home._  

A shadow moves inside the shack, blurred edges slowly sharpening into distinctness as it makes a final pass across the window, out the door, and there he is. 

There is always the possibility that he is a fake. But what that voice had told her was true, if embarrassing, and she figured she owed it to his memory to at least go see. She owed him that much, at least. 

“Kallen.” His voice sounds closer to how she remembers it. Maybe it was the whole... being _dead_ thing which made it raspy. 

She makes no move to answer him, just stares at Lazarus, come fresh from the grave, walking and talking and living and _breathing_. 

He moves towards her. “Kallen--” 

She rolls up the window. She braces her forearms on the steering wheel, puts her head in her hands, and takes several deep, deep breaths to calm her racing heart.

When she comes up again, he’s staring through the passenger window at her, and there’s concern in those purple eyes of his. It reminds her of his face in Shinjuku, when she had slapped him, like he’s suddenly come to some kind of realization. 

Sighing, Kallen reaches across, and opens the door.

 

* * *

  

It's been minutes upon minutes of silence, uncomfortable moment after uncomfortable moment stacked atop another. The second he had entered the car, she had him by the collar of his shirt and her knife to his throat. “If you even  _think_ of trying anything, I will slit your throat before you can blink,” she had said. He had given a hoarse laugh and said he’d keep his hands to himself, and then nothing. 

And now there they are, on the road back to Tokyo, mute and stone-faced. Kallen thinks she should interrogate him while she has the chance, while he can’t escape, so that’s what she does. 

“So. You’re... alive... now.” 

He nods slowly. “So it would seem.” 

Kallen doesn’t look at him, instead stares straight ahead at the dark expanse of the road unfolding before them, at the shadows of the trees pushing against the gleam of the headlights. She still has her knife in her hand. “It’s really you?” 

He nods again, and reaches for the bottom of his shirt. Lifting it, he shows her the scar where the sword had pierced him: an angry, red stripe crossing his torso, not yet faded. There’s going to be a similar one on his back, she’s sure. 

She has to ask him. “Have you... have you just been hiding, all this time?” If he says yes, she’s going to pull over and dump him on the side of the road, consequences be damned. 

“No,” he says immediately, and the obvious frustration--the  _bitterness--_ in his voice surprises her. “No. This was... not according to plan.” 

How typical of him. “Not according to plan? So arranging your own public assassination  _was_  according to plan?” 

“... Yes,” he says after a moment, looking at her appraisingly, but also with a hint of pride. “I knew you’d figure it out.” 

“Thanks,” she sneers, “thanks a lot. Counting on me to realize your scheme as I’m watching you die--thanks. Thanks for that.”  _God,_ she's angry with him. Angry for the lies, angry for the terror, angry for her own twisting heartache as the crowd had chanted the name of their apparent savior, as the one they truly loved bled out below the dais. 

“Kallen, I--”

“Why did you call me?” she asks, cutting him off. “Why me?” 

He shifts in his seat. “I had to think things through--”

“Bullshit,” she snaps. “You mean I was the only option.” 

There’s guilt in his eyes. That’s good. “Yes,” he says, after another tense pause. “I can’t contact Nunnally, for... for many reasons. Suzaku, too, is out by default. Then I couldn’t reach Jeremiah.” 

“ _Orange?”_  she says. “You called  _Orange_  first?”

“He didn’t answer. I’m worried about him.” 

Kallen braces herself against the seat as they wind through a curve. “And C.C.? She couldn’t have helped you out?”

“... I can’t find her,” he admits. “We lost contact when... when I came back. I can’t sense her either.”  _  
_

_Sense_  her? “Oh. You mean... your...” 

He nods again. “When a Geass contract is made, it creates a... a sort of psychic link between the granter and the grantee. It should work regardless of mortality, but for some reason I can’t sense C.C. on the other end. Think of it as going straight to voicemail.” 

Kallen hadn’t heard from C.C. in at least two months, as she had said that she’d be traveling away from civilization for a bit. C.C. had always flitted in and out of Kallen’s life whenever it suited her, so to hear nothing for long periods of time was nothing out of the ordinary. But to hear him say, in so many words, that there was something wrong... It was worrisome. 

“That’s how you got the phone?” 

“And the clothes. Thanks for reminding me,” he says, and tosses the phone out the window. “It was his--the man I used my Geass on. I almost feel sorry, but...” 

She snorts. That sounds like him. “And I’m still your only option? You’re sure about coming back to Tokyo?”

“You live by yourself. You know everyone who might know something. And...” he hesitates, “you were the only one who answered.” 

Kallen makes it a point not to look at him. “I wonder if I shouldn’t have. If I should have just hung up on you.” 

“But you didn’t,” he says softly, light and shadows from the streetlamps dancing on his face as the Toyko skyline rises before them, expanding out of the horizon. “Thank you for that.” 

“Why didn’t  _you_  hang up?” she asks. “You had to have had a Plan... D? You had to have had  _something._ ” 

He looks at her as if it’s obvious. “You told me to try again,” he says, something else--something she doesn't want to acknowledge--hiding underneath his earnestness, and then they fall back into uncomfortable silence.  
  

* * *

 

She doesn’t have a problem sneaking him in--she jiggles the lock on the service door and hauls him up the stairs so quickly that he’s panting once it’s over. 

“Okay, so--bathroom is down the hall, first door on the right. It’s the only one, so don’t hog it. My room is next door. Kitchen is the first door on the left, and I think that’s about it. I don’t have a spare bedroom, but the couch is comfortable enough. Hopefully you won’t mind it.” 

“I’m sure I won’t,” he says, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “Thank you.” 

Kallen bustles off to find him sheets and a blanket. Digging an old set of linens out of the back of her closet, she takes a blanket from the chair in the corner and returns to the living room to find him observing everything, everything from the pictures on the wall to the rug underneath the coffee table. It makes her feel like her whole life, the new life they bled and suffered and struggled for, is under scrutiny. She tries not to mind it.

“So... uh, I think that’s everything,” she says. “I’m going to sleep now. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. I can go grocery shopping tomorrow...”

“I can do the cooking, if you want,” he says immediately. “I’ll make a list, if you’d like. It's only fair.” 

“Sure, that’d be nice.” Turning the lamp on the bookshelf off, she glances back at him. “Good night, I guess.” 

“Good night,” Lelouch answers, tucking the sheet neatly around the cushions, taking care to smooth out the wrinkles. “Sleep well, Kallen.” 

She closes her door on him and turns out the light. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will probably be a series of short stories/chapters chronicling my unrealistic, fever dream Lelouch-and-Kallen-centric continuation of the series, which has come about because I'm bored, full of emotion, and have way too much time on my hands. I support this ship and love these two together despite all the vitriol and bullshit, so if you enjoyed this story, please let me know!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watch me not give a single fuck, Sunrise.

She can feel his eyes, the question in them. She doesn’t know if she should answer. 

His breath is warm on her back, his hand on the curve of her hip, fingertips lightly tracing the jut of her pelvis. 

“I suppose you want to know,” she whispers, breaking the heavy silence. Her words take a hammer to it, and it shatters. Instantly, she is awake. 

“I  _am_  curious, I won’t lie,” Lelouch whispers back, “but you know you don’t have to. It’s not important.” 

He won’t lie? That’s a first. 

Kallen shifts, stretches her legs against his own. His lips drowsily linger, half-open, against the nape of her neck, and for a moment it is so,  _so_  incredibly tempting to draw herself closer to him, surrender to his warmth and fall gracelessly back into sleep… but Kallen has never taken the easy path, and she isn’t about to start now. Unknowingly her hand covers his own against her skin, before she shifts further on her side and that same hand balls the sheets into its fist. 

“It was Xingke,” she admits after several slow and indolent heartbeats, his hand still warm against her. “He understood me. He was the only one who… didn’t expect anything, or want…” She takes a breath. “He was the only one who understood what I was willing to give.” 

Lelouch’s breathing hitches behind her, but only for a moment. Then he chuckles dryly. “At least it wasn’t that blond Britannian oaf.” The oaf’s name is dancing in his mind just out of reach, but it’s not important. There are only two people who matter right now: the two of them, and maybe the ghost of Xingke that Kallen has brought with her. 

Kallen hums a little. “No. I have more self-respect than that and you know it.” 

“Xingke is remarkable,” he whispers behind her. “You could have chosen worse.” 

She can’t help but laugh at that. “Truth be told,” she says, a melancholy smile on her face, “I think he was just as frustrated as I was.” 

“Frustrated? With what?” 

“This,” she says, waving a hand around. “Trying to find a place. The newness of it all. Xingke and I, we’d been soldiers so long, we didn’t know how to be anything else. Sometimes I think that I still don’t know.”

“But you did what I asked,” Lelouch responds, his voice low and quiet. “You lived on.”

“Mm. I guess so,” Kallen says, and leaves it at that, but there’s something she’s not telling him, and they both know it. 

“And? There’s something else, isn’t there?” 

Lelouch’s natural curiosity never rests, even when the rest of him is tired and sated–she came home from class one day to find him with a fully cooked dinner, a stack of her textbooks, and a laundry list of questions about the assignments on her syllabi. Kallen had racked her memory until it was a disjointed mass for recollections of their shared time at Ashford, because she could not, for the life of her, remember a single solitary instance of Lelouch actually studying, even if one of the council members had been there to hold a gun to her head. Lucky for her, they weren’t.  

“You’re nosy,” she complains as she pushes his hand away to roll over onto her stomach. He’s already died once, and if he keeps on being snoopy she’s going to kill him again. 

“It’s part of my charm.” He takes a long time stretching next her, less athletic–reaching his fingertips toward the headboard, toes towards the foot of the bed, almost like he’s trying to pull himself apart. “There’s something else, isn’t there?” he repeats. “Or someone.” 

She doesn’t answer him right away. Instead she rearranges her head on the pillow and half-twists back onto her side again and mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like “C.C.” 

For a moment Kallen thinks he actually  _has_ died again, because she can feel the sudden halt in his breathing, and the silence that comes after seems like lasts for eons. Then he chuckles, heaves a sigh, and flops onto his back. 

“I’m not going to ask you what you’re thinking,” she says at last, head pillowed on her arms. “It’s my life, and I don’t have to justify anything to you.” 

“No, you don’t,” Lelouch agrees. “I’m just…”

“Startled?”

“The connotation is a little too intense. I would say surprised rather than startled.” 

Kallen rolls her eyes and snorts. “Of  _course_  you choose to be pedantic now, of all times.” She watches him lazily. “I’m glad you’re not completely shocked. I was.” 

“No. C.C. is… quite old. I doubt she has any sort of… preference… still. You, on the other hand… I’m not completely surprised. No, what I really  _am_  surprised about is the fact that you two managed to keep it under wraps for so long.” 

“I suppose you want to know about this too, huh,” Kallen says. “I won’t give you a blow-by-blow, but… do you want me to tell you what happened?”

He doesn’t say anything, but the look on his face speaks for itself. 

“Aomori,” she says. “The year you lost your memory, when she and I were living together.” Kallen rolls onto her back to match him and wraps her arms around herself. “That was the first time. I was in a spiral, she was morose–more so than usual, I mean. So we got a bottle of whiskey for me and wine for her and we got drunk and…” She flaps her hand in the air. “One thing. Another thing. You know.” 

Lelouch doesn’t respond to her right away. Instead, after another beat, he says, “… the  _first_  time?” 

It figures that would be the first thing he’d focus on. She thought it would be about their being drunk, although if she’s honest, she and C.C. had gone well past being  _merely_  drunk into ‘absolutely shitfaced,’ and they had both paid dearly for it the next morning. “Yeah. Then a few times, after… after you, then we decided to go our separate ways, at least for a little while. She came back to visit a few times, but nothing else happened.” 

 _And now she’s gone._ Missing, not gone, Kallen reminds herself. C.C. can never be truly  _gone_ , just like she’ll never stop being stubborn. It just isn’t possible.

But that’s neither here nor there. She’s leveled with him now, and there’s nothing left to say about it. It happened and it’s in the past, where she thought he’d also stay. 

 _And_  to top it all off, she’s awake now, and the warm, mellow sleepiness that had settled over her has completely evaporated. Kallen sighs, kicks the covers off, and rolls complainingly, groaning, out of bed. 

She finds her shirt from last night and her underwear and dresses, only pausing when she hears Lelouch’s voice from behind her. 

“Going somewhere?” he asks, and when she turns to look at him, he’s sprawled out onto her side of the bed, grinning lazily. 

“I have homework to do,” she says pointedly, taking a moment to adjust her underwear on her hips, shaking out her hair. 

Lelouch stretches out again, and she can still feel his eyes on her: on her lean thighs, on the small, toned sliver of her abdomen, on the slow spread of her collarbones under the scooped collar of her overlarge shirt. “Why don’t you bring it in here?” he suggests. “We can work on it together.” 

“It’s prep for gross anatomy,” Kallen tells him. “Labeling diagrams. How much do you know about posterior abdominal viscera?” 

“Bring it in here anyway,” he says. “It’ll give us both something to do. Aside from each other, I mean.” 

Kallen picks up Lelouch’s discarded pullover and pitches it at his face. He halfheartedly puts up his arm, a second too late, and laughs as the sleeves cover his eyes. Much to her embarrassment, she feels a blush creep across her cheeks. 

“Yeah, well, when I’m elbow-deep in a dead guy’s thoracic cavity, just know that I’m thinking of you, and how I’d like to kill you. Again.” 

“That’s sweet of you,” he says, as she opens the door, retrieves her anatomical atlas and her worksheets from the kitchen table, and returns, dumping them unceremoniously on the bed. Kallen decides not to dignify his comment with a snarky retort. 

Instead, she sits cross-legged on the bed and turns on the lamp. She opens her book to the correct page, rifles through the papers in her folder to find the correct packet, and hums a little as she looks from drawing to book, book to drawing. Lelouch rolls onto his elbow, props his head on his hand, pulls the covers up a little bit farther, and watches intently as she points out viscera and veins, tissues and structures.

He watches Kallen become absorbed in her work, oblivious to his gentle gaze, and finds himself thinking that things have certainly changed, and for the better–it’s an unusual position for him, to be the one who is taught instead of the one doing the teaching. Kallen mumbles something about stroma and parenchyma and epithelial cells, erasing something on her paper, and Lelouch decides he doesn’t mind at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of things: 
> 
> 1\. Clearly this is not following the movie!verse canon. Consider it an independent R3, an alternate re:surrection, I don't care. That means none of the changes the movies made are present here - Shirley's still dead, etc, etc. My expectations for the movie were low to begin with, and still Sunrise managed to disappoint me even more. I'm actually kind of impressed to see how badly they scuttled their own creation. Oh well, they want to run their franchise and its redeeming qualities into the ground, that's their choice.  
> 2\. This is going off my vague memories that some people looked at the books on Kallen's bookshelf at the end of R2, and translated the titles as being medical textbooks. Ergo, Kallen's a medical student here. Did I dream that or was that actually a thing?  
> 3\. I'm not going to stop shipping these two. Expect updates in the future because I'm not out of ideas yet.  
> 4\. Kallen deserves better treatment from the narrative than what she's gotten, so I'm giving it to her because I love her, even though whoever wrote these movies clearly gave less than two shits about anyone who wasn't C.C. or Lelouch.  
> 5\. Kiss my ass, Sunrise.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note bene: this is set immediately after part I, and obviously before part II.

Kallen hates mornings, and always has.

When her alarm beeps, she slams the snooze button and tries to curl herself into a ball, but the sunlight filtering in through her blinds naturally falls right into her eyes no matter how she squirms, so she grumbles and growls to herself and slides clumsily out of bed.

She’s tired. She hasn’t slept well, she has the oddest feeling that something important happened the previous day, but doesn’t remember what it is...

... until she spots the physical reminder making himself at home in her kitchen.

“Oh,  _Jesus!_ ” she exclaims, and staggers against the wall in complete and utter shock, hand over her heart like a character from one of Milly’s soap operas.

“Not quite,” Lelouch answers. “We both came back from the dead, but I think that’s about where the similarities end.” 

“Right. You’re alive now.” She sits down heavily at the table and starts to rub the sleep out of her eyes. “I haven’t compartmentalized yet. Or woken up. Sorry.”

“Still not a morning person, I see,” he says. “Here, I made some coffee.” He sets a steaming mug down before her drooping eyes, and takes a long, hard look at her. “How do you take it?”

“Black,” she says. Testing the white ceramic with the pad of her pointer finger, she rotates the cup in her hands, waiting for it to cool. 

“Funny. So do I.” Lelouch sits down across from her at her little table with his own mug, and they sit in awkward, uneasy silence, not meeting each others’ eyes, until a hiss from the stove calls him away. 

“Is that bacon?” She’d had some in her freezer for months, but hadn’t had the time (or the inclination) to make it. It smells  _amazing_. 

“Yes. I’d ask if you want cheese on your omelet but there isn’t any in your fridge.” 

“No. I don’t really like cheese that well. I never ate it much growing up.”

Lelouch chuckles, turning the bacon over with a pair of tongs Kallen didn’t even know she had. “Strange to think how different our childhoods were. When I was... in Britannia, we had cheese in some form at every meal, every day.”

“Ugh.” It slips out before she can help herself, and she winces. “Sorry. You probably thought some of our food was gross too when you first got here.” 

“I’m still not very fond of  _sazae,_ but you have managed to change my mind about most shellfish.” 

Lelouch takes the bacon out of the pan and chops it up, before he sets it aside and starts chopping up the half an onion she left in a plastic bag, from the last time she attempted to cook something. He sets that aside too and then starts chopping up two large shiitake mushrooms, then dumps everything in a bowl and tosses it together with a spatula.

Kallen is amazed. She didn’t even know she  _owned_  a spatula.

In a second bowl, he cracks six eggs and adds a dash of water--in place of milk, he tells her, which is what makes the eggs fluffy. He adds a bit of vegetable oil to the pan used for the bacon--in place of butter, he tells her again, because the lipids provide a protective layer between the eggs and the heat, so they can cook without burning, and pours in half of the eggs too.

After the eggs have hardened, he delicately pours half of the bacon-onion-mushroom mix into the pan, flips half of the egg-patty over, and slides it out onto a plate, which he sets at her seat with a flourish.

“You like to cook, don’t you?” she asks as she digs around in a drawer for forks, and then in her tiniest, most awkward cabinet for the salt, pepper, and hot sauce. 

“I didn’t really have a choice,” he replies. “I had my sister to take care of, and eventually Suzaku too, so I had to figure it out or we all would have starved.” Lelouch slides out the second omelet onto his own plate, and takes a glance at the cabinet she’s rummaging around in. “ _That’s_  where you keep your salt and pepper?”

“This cabinet isn’t good for much else,” she responds, groping around at the back of a shelf for a specific bottle, stiffening when she feels Lelouch appear close behind her. 

“You have exactly three vegetables in your entire fridge, but two whole  _sacks_  of white rice and five different kinds of hot sauce,” he complains, peering over her head into the cabinet. “What are you looking for?” 

“The sriracha.” 

“Here,” he says, sliding his arm around her to push a bottle of curry powder out of the way, and grabs the sriracha before he hands it down. She takes it primly and sits down at the table with a thud, before sprinkling salt, pepper, and a torrential amount of sriracha over her omelet. Lelouch adds a much more moderate amount to his own before before they start eating, but not before asking Kallen what her weekly schedule is like.  

“I have classes starting at nine in the morning, until nine at night, Mondays and Wednesdays. Tuesdays are Black Knights stuff or Guren and Rakhshata stuff, and so on. Fridays I have two labs, then I usually spend the evening with Mom. Alternate Saturdays are also Black Knights, Guren, Rakhshata...” 

“No wonder you don’t cook,” he grumbles. But then he smiles, and Kallen would be lying if she doesn’t notice the melancholy which sneaks, like a flash of lightning, across his face. “I’m glad you’re still in contact with your mother.”

“Well, of course,” she says, a little confused. “Why wouldn’t I be? Hey, that reminds me: how did you know I lived by myself?” 

“I didn’t,” Lelouch answers, wincing a little as he wipes a bit of hot sauce off of what Kallen suddenly notices is a cracked lip, “but I figured you wouldn’t have agreed to come get me so quickly if you weren’t alone,” and she has to concede he has a fair point. 

“Yeah, after a... year and a half or so, Mom said I’d sacrificed enough for her sake, that I had so much ahead of me, blah blah blah. She wanted me to live my own life and not worry so much about her, so she--very gently--told me that I should find my own place, and that I was welcome to visit her whenever I wanted.” 

“So she evicted you.” 

Kallen nods. “She kicked me out. In the absolute, nicest way possible, but still. She kicked me out.”

Lelouch laughs at that, and worries his lip with his tongue and teeth when his smile causes the crack to widen. Kallen looks to the side and begins to chuckle too, but starts in alarm when she notices that she should have been out the door about fifteen minutes ago. Pushing out of her chair, she races into her room, shimmies out of her pajamas and tosses them on the bed, pulls on her clothes, and races back out without washing her face or brushing her teeth.

“I didn’t realize it was so late,” Lelouch begins as she careens into the living room, grabs her backpack and throws on a sweatshirt, before he trails off, regarding her with a curious look, which puzzles her. Does she have hot sauce on her face or something? 

Suddenly Kallen realizes that Lelouch is looking at her clothes, not her face, and remembers that he’s been dead for three fucking years and has no idea that she’s a medical student, as she pats down the pockets of her scrubs to double-check she has her keys even as she’s bolting towards the door.

“Okay, okay,” she says breathlessly, trying to organize her thoughts, as she’s fumbling at the doorknob. “Uh, I’ll be back, don’t go outside, help yourself to food, we can talk about my life choices later, I’ll see you and... goodbye?”

“We need to talk about the... situation...” he reminds her, stepping neatly to the side as she slips through the door and pulls it shut, shouting “Later!” and he isn’t sure if she means it as a farewell or a promise as the echo of her footsteps in the hall fade away. The sudden quiet that follows in her absence is deafening.

Kallen had been a tornado on the battlefield. She is, evidently, not so different off of it.

Lelouch shrugs, suddenly wishing he could turn on a radio or the television to break the silence, and starts to clean up the dishes.

* * *

He spends the day being nosy. Lelouch methodically goes through the entire kitchen, the bathroom, leaving Kallen’s room alone to respect her privacy (for the most part--he pokes his head in to note the location of the window and the vents), and makes mental notes of all the windows, doors, and vents. He hopes she doesn’t mind that he rearranges the furniture in the living room ever so slightly, just to make sure that a body lying down on the sofa won't immediately be seen from the front door.

He makes notes of what else he finds in her apartment: the unusual blend of artwork on her walls, the titles on her bookshelves, her textbooks. A keyboard in her (exceedingly crowded) coat closet. A record player on her bookshelves, the small contingent of records underneath serving as a bookend for a diverse collection, ranging from nonfiction to manga. He’s surprised, despite himself, and he takes a moment to self-chastise--why shouldn’t Kallen have an intellectual life, her own interests? Suddenly, the weight of his lost time is unbearable. Why should it hurt him, to think--to  _know--_ that Kallen had a life outside of and beyond him?

She’s her own person. But all of these things--her choices, her music, her art, her books, all her possessions--reveal somebody he isn’t sure he knows. However, that doesn’t mean he can’t start: Lelouch selects a thick volume (high fantasy, he judges from the cover) and sits down on the couch to read.

* * *

He’s still reading when the door to the apartment slams shut, well after dark. He looks down the hallway to see a pair of bloody scrubs stampeding towards him, and does a double take.

“Dissection,” Kallen says, kicking off her shoes in the hallway, “and I wouldn’t ask which part if I were you.” 

“Nice to see you too,” he responds. “Are you hungry?” 

“Starving. Did you actually have anything to work with?” Kallen looks around. “I thought the kitchen was pretty much empty. I haven’t been grocery shopping in ages.”

“I’m a master at making food stretch. You have the staples, even if you don’t know it, and I can deal with the rest.” Lelouch stands and makes his way to the kitchen, and Kallen follows him. “Time to eat.” 

“You mean you haven’t eaten?” she remarks, looking absolutely scandalized. “It’s almost eleven!”

“Not waiting is rude,” Lelouch responds. “And we can talk over dinner. It’s chicken and rice pilaf.”

He microwaves both the plates, sets them on the table, and Kallen wastes no time in digging in. Lelouch is surprised by his own appetite, as he attacks the food with a vehemence similar to Kallen’s own. 

She swallows a bite down. “So. You said we needed to talk, right? About... this?” 

“Mm,” he agrees. “I think both of us would like to know just what the hell is going on.” 

“And you think I can help find out?” 

“I think you’re well-placed to make some discreet inquiries. I can guide you with that. What we really need is C.C., but as she’s currently... in the wind, I think the best thing to do would be to have you try to find her, then go from there.” 

“There’s a break in two weeks or so,” Kallen says. “I’m not sure how much I can help when I have my exams coming up, but after that I can spend more time digging around.” 

“That’s fair. I don’t think I’m going anywhere,” Lelouch says, bringing another bite of food to his mouth, “which brings me to my next point--”

“You need a wig,” Kallen interrupts, on the tail end of a swallow. “And contacts. So you can go outside. I was thinking about that too, because you can’t be stuck in here all day. It’s not healthy. Or useful.”

“Yes.” He swallows a bite of chicken. “Seeing as I’m still legally dead, you’ll have to get them. I’m not fussy about the wig, but you’ll need to get the contacts made custom, because they have to block my Geass. I’ll give you the name of the company. They respond quickly and you can do the whole thing online. And once I have them I can be more useful. I may not be able to access the same spaces as you, but I can at least make myself useful in the domestic sphere.”

“The wig will be easy,” Kallen says. “I’ll just raid the drama department, no one will miss a wig. The contacts... would using a public library computer to order them be wise? They don’t save any information. Also, I don’t believe you when you say you won’t be fussy. You’ll absolutely be fussy. You are the definition of fussy.” 

“That’s a good idea. And I know what I like--that isn’t being fussy, it’s being precise.” He sets his fork down, having somehow beat Kallen at finishing a meal.

Kallen mutters “fussy” underneath her breath as she scrapes the last bit of rice from her plate. “You cooked. I’ll do the dishes.” She takes them to the sink, scrapes the food into a bin, and wrenches on the faucet, which gives a grating squeak. She removes her scrub top, revealing a tank top underneath, and tosses it on to her chair. 

“You didn’t have to do that. You could at least let me earn my keep.”

“You’re a guest,” she says brusquely. “The least we could do is trade off on it.” For some reason, a prickly feeling starts to move through his chest at her words. What could there possibly be in those sentences that hurts his feelings? 

“I suppose you’re right,” he says after a beat, “but we  _will_  be trading off. Mark my words.” 

“Sure.” Kallen dries the last plate and puts it in the cabinet with the others. “Hey, I’ve got an early morning tomorrow, so I’m going to turn in. Goodnight, okay?”

He watches her as she gathers her discarded shirt and heads into her bedroom without a backwards glance. The sound of her door closing reminds him of when she’d left earlier in the day, but while she’s only a room away, suddenly Kallen feels far more distant than she was during her actual absence. 

Lelouch finds himself irrationally bothered by it. He isn’t quite sure why. He grabs Kallen’s book from the table, not that she had noticed, and heads to the sofa to steel himself for a late night. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Insomnia is a _bitch_.

The night air is chilly, but Kallen pays it no mind as her feet take her wherever they please. 

She stumbles as the side of her foot comes down hard on a seam in the pavement, but she rights herself and finds her footing, running on with wild abandon into the night. Tokyo does not sleep and neither does she, no matter how tired she feels or how heavy her eyes are and she's come to learn that, when these agonizingly slow nights find her, there's nothing she can do but meet them where they are. 

She runs past her favorite corner store, past the train station that takes her to school, towards the river, dodging those in her way. Most of the passersby are drunk and smiling, turning to look at her with bleary, glassy eyes as she sprints past them. One group has a man who shouts after her, but she forgets about him as she pushes herself into a sprint to make a light. 

The park is full of shadows when she arrives, and the only sounds she hears are traffic and night birds, just as she wanted. The Shibuya river is a trickle, a narrow canal compared to the width of the Kano and the estuaries where she'd grown up, but there's something soothing about being near flowing water. Kallen takes a minute to take in the sight of the Shibuya, the lights of the city glinting on it through the trees, but then her restlessness seizes her by the throat and she has to run again. 

She has two options: run until she vomits, or scream at the top of her lungs for an hour straight. Running doesn't bring the cops or piss off the neighbors, so that's what she chooses. 

Kallen remembers all the trees in Izu. Beech, black pine, cedar-- _cryptomeria,_ she remembers Naoto had called by its Latin name. She remembers Naoto taking her into the woods, a little girl with coltish legs and too much energy, quizzing her on birds. As she runs, she pushes herself to recall as many as she can: _Pacific loon, greater short-toed lark, Japanese skylark_... She takes a ragged, gasping breath-- _barn swallow, Pacific swallow, Japanese waxwing_ \--and tries to ignore the burning in her calves. _Japanese thrush, Eurasian tree sparrow, Japanese bush warbler_ , and she falls to her knees, hard, in the middle of the path, rolling off to lay panting next to a cypress tree.

She wonders where that little girl went. Kallen is sure she doesn't know. 

Kallen raises a fist and pounds it against the tree trunk, the rest of her body still. Whatever it is that hovers over her, she can't fight it, and she can't outrun it. All she wants to do is run until she collapses, to push herself, feel nothing but strain until she forgets herself. 

There's something bubbling inside her, water or lava, she doesn't know. Geyser or volcano?

Kallen raises her hand and wipes sloppily at her face, smearing snot, sweat--and are those tears?--but she stays laying where she is. Hopefully, no one will come by and question why there's a young woman laying on her side under a tree, in a deserted park, at three in the morning. 

She gives herself five more deep breaths, then she'll get up. Otherwise, she has an utterly bizarre feeling that whatever possesses her on these nights is going to drag her back home, face down on the pavement, by the nape of the neck. It's not rational, but it motivates her to move when otherwise she'd just lay there, blinking and sleepless, until the sun comes up. 

Kallen pushes herself upright, sighs, shakes the dirt and leaves from her hair, and begins her run back. 

* * *

When she sees her apartment complex, Kallen slows herself into a jog for the last few blocks. Her street, so busy in the morning, is silent and still now, the few lights peering out from the windows muddied and dim. But soon, she knows, there will be a slow trickle of people, then a flood of them, as they all rush out to make their way to school, or work, or wherever it is they're going. 

She had left Lelouch asleep on the sofa he had moved, and he hadn't stirred as she tiptoed past and silently shut the door behind her. Hopefully she can return and slip inside, back in her room, without waking him; if she's really lucky, her door won't squeak at all.

Technically, she's supposed to use the main entrance. But the service door is easily wiggled opened, and it's far closer to her apartment than walking all the way around to the front of the building. Kallen slips inside, jogs up the stairs to the fifth floor, trying to remember all the while why she wanted a fifth floor unit (a little bit bigger and a private bathroom), and sticks her hand down what passes as the pocket of her leggings to find her key. 

Slowly, incredibly carefully, she inserts the key and presses it to the inside of the lock, making sure to maintain the pressure as she twists it open, and then takes the knob in her still-sweaty hand and twists that too. Kallen tiptoes inside and turns to press the door almost silently shut, bracing a knee against it as she turns the lock to the "closed" position, not noticing that the small lamp on her bookshelf is on. To be fair, the light from said lamp is super dim, so dim that if she turns it on in the daytime it's almost like it isn't on at all. 

"You know, for a woman who's so deadly in a Knightmare, I'm surprised you aren't more aware of your surroundings outside of one." 

Kallen leans her head back and closes her eyes. "First of all, save it, because I'm not in the mood. Second of all, you were asleep when I left." 

"I was." Lelouch stretches his legs out in front of him, sweeping them to the side to sit fully up. "I think I just missed you. I heard the door squeak and by the time I fully woke up you were gone." 

Damn that door. "Well, I'm back, so you can go back to sleep," Kallen says, moving to take the yoga mat from its spot under the side table and unrolling it in front of the television. "This doesn't make much noise." But as she starts her post-run routine and goes into Downward-facing Dog, stretching out her hamstrings and back, she notices that Lelouch is staring at her, and his expression is... unamused. 

"So this is it, then?" 

"What are you  _talking_ about?" she asks between deep breaths, pedaling each foot before stretching her heels down to the ground. 

"Are we not going to talk about the fact that you decided that three in the morning was an excellent time to go for a run?" Lelouch sits up straighter. "Where did you go?"

"One, I'm an adult and I can run at three a.m. if I want to, it's none of your damn business," Kallen responds, "and two, Shibuya." 

"You ran to  _Shibuya?_ "

"Yes, Lelouch, I ran to Shibuya," she says, lowering herself into Cobra, keeping her breathing rhythmic. "Most people are capable of running. Some of us even enjoy it." Kallen finds it in her to be amused by his glower. 

"Fine, fine. You can do what you want," he says, with an airy sigh and a wave of his hand, "but why?"

Crap. "No other time to do it," she says, after one beat too long, and she knows that Lelouch knows she's lying. Kallen hopes he'll drop it, and decide it's too early in the morning for an interrogation, but death hasn't made Lelouch any less ruthless.  

"Really. So you do this every morning?" he asks. "This is your routine?"

Kallen pushes herself back into a runner's lunge. "Just drop it." 

Wrong thing to say. Lelouch has never let anything go in his entire life, both the first half and the second. "What's going on?" he asks, and there's genuine concern underneath the irritation, and that little hint of concern pisses her the fuck off. 

"Nothing." 

"Kallen," he starts, his tone even and so annoyingly rational, that she comes out of her forward fold with a vengeance. 

"What?" she snaps. "You want to know why I ran? Because I can't sleep and I can't stay here all night and stare at nothing. So I go for runs. I don't want to stay awake, but I can't sleep. I don't... I don't shut off. I never have. When this kind of night hits me it's just... there's really nothing else I can do but run." 

Lelouch is staring at her again, slightly shell-shocked. "Do you have trouble sleeping a lot?" he asks. 

"Don't psychoanalyze me," Kallen snaps again. "Do  _you_ think I have trouble sleeping?" 

"I wouldn't really know, considering I've been... dead," he says, "but I'm going to go with yes." 

"A-plus, here's a gold star." Kallen starts to roll up the mat. "Now you know." 

"Yes," Lelouch says, "and the question is, what are you going to do about it? You can't function like this." 

That stops her dead in her tracks. "What am  _I_ going to do about it? I have tried  _everything._  Valerian root, melatonin, benadryl, everything.What are  _you_ going to do about it?" 

He doesn't have an answer ready for that. Lelouch has always had a plan for everything, but he cannot _fix_ Kallen, just like he couldn't  _fix_ Nunnally, or C.C., or Suzaku. He cannot _make_ her better. When the world was wrong, before, he had fixed it. But this is different. "What about seeing a doctor? There are options for medications," he asks, resisting the urge snark back at her. 

"Pills are out of the question." Kallen waves her hand. "You get one guess as to why." 

"Right." Lelouch blinks and puts his elbows on his knees. "So... that's it?" 

"That's it." Kallen stows the mat underneath the side table. "Nothing else to do about it. Not right now, anyway." Turning her back on him, she says, "I'm going to take a shower. You should try to sleep," and goes off without a backwards glance. 

* * *

He had tried to stay awake, but the light was still low and the night still held sway outside, and the sound of the shower running provided the white noise he liked, and he had fallen back asleep before he realized it was happening.

Lelouch had wondered about the shadows under Kallen's eyes when she first picked him up, but chalked it up to her grueling schedule, as she had told him when they arrived. Now he knows better. 

When he woke, Kallen was gone, and the clock told him it was well before the time she needed to leave by. Lelouch wonders if she had slept at all. He doubts it. 

He needs her to help him, but Lelouch think  _he_ needs to help  _her_ first. Kallen is loyal, honest, one of the strongest people he knows, but she is struggling. Neither is she happy, and though it may be self-centered, Lelouch's first thought is that he didn't  _die_ and come back to life for her to be miserable in the new world they helped make together. 

His second thought is that there's no food in the apartment. Lelouch grabs the apartment phone, the sticky note with Kallen's cell number, and leaves a voicemail with a grocery list. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting there! I promise! I know I'm writing very slowly, but I am still interested in this story (and this ship)! My real life has gotten extremely Real lately and it's been a lot, so it's been a bit of a slog.
> 
> I do plan on adding more chapters, and at some point I do plan on reorganizing the chapters so that one (you know the one) doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. 
> 
> Let me know what you think! *finger guns*


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